understanding any word or any sense of it, and had seen seals and signatures set at the public office to documents a metre in length.

When he took his place in the lumbering diligence to be borne homeward, he felt that the dust of the road and the blue of the sky spun round him. Life was over for him, as much as though the coffin had been nailed down above his body.

His little house had been very dear to him; it had made him feel proud and like a man; there had been always that little place to live and die in, a place all his own, as much as the palace is a monarch's now that another had a claim on it, all that was

over.

'I have borrowed on the house,' he said to his daughter when he reached home, and

sank into a chair, pale to the lips, and with all his limbs and frame trembling.

Then he stretched out his hands with a

sudden strength of passion.

'God's curse on them!' he cried fiercely; 'God's curse on them!'

CHAPTER XIV.

EXT morning timid Cecco the cooper went for Pippo and paid the

two hundred and forty three

francs claimed by the municipality.

Pippo was in bed with what is called a stroke of heat, and wandered in his speech and seemed stupid. Timid Cecco went and paid it all because the girl asked him to do so, he being very far from sure that he would not be incriminated in some way himself. But when they gave him the receipt for the money, the simple soul was overjoyed, and ran back as fast as ever he could, and tore up Pippo's

stairs, and went in triumph to Pippo's bedside.

'Now you have got a bit of paper,' he

cried; they never can hurt you any more.

Keep it close. Never lose it. You've got your bit of paper now!'

The old man lay with his face to the wall, and answered nothing.

Viola, young, and so hopeful, caught Cecco's arm in both her hands.

Is that true? Is that really true? Will they never be able to torment us any

Simple Cecco, in the honesty of his own convictions, patted her hands kindly, and said:

Of course they can't, my dear, now you have got that bit of paper. You must keep it close, and always have it by to show; this bit of paper. Why, my dear,' continued

Cecco, with a touch of patriotic indignation, 'Do you think after taking nigh three hundred francs from your poor grandfather, they wouldn't respect his bit of paper? No, no; they're bad, but not so bad as that.'

'And Raggi may be loose?'

Cecco scratched his head thoughtfully.

6

Why, I should say so, my dear: for what else is the tax paid for her, and that bit of paper given?'

The one-idea'd mind of Cecco the cooper could not embrace a state of things in which you should pay heaps of fines and taxes and yet get nothing in return for them.

'Poor grandfather!' said Viola with her onyx-like eyes suffused and tender. Pray God send him no more trouble.'

Pippo, as she spoke, sat suddenly up in

his bed.